In the middle of all the chaos this morning, there are few still voices. That is, one supposes, the result of a media election. There has to be something found to be said, to keep people on the screen.Well, there is a simpler truth... there doesn't really need to be anything said it all. It's all much plainer, and more simple: we're confused. The election results reflect that. We're not sure who we are, where we are going, and what we are fighting for.
Is this a surprise to anyone? If it is, you've not be paying attention.
In the past 250 years, our world, society, culture and politics have changed beyond recognition. In the past 100 years, equally. Again, in the past five decades, we've changed so fundamentally in how we operate, who we think we are, and how to proceed with out vision of the world... we can barely recognise our own grandparents.
It's less than one hundred years since Universal suffrage in the UK. In 1918, only after the war, did all males of a certain age, receive the vote. It was only ten years later, for all females of the same age. Contrary to popular myth, the female suffragette movement did not herald in female suffrage. If anything, it delayed it. (And what does that say about who were were? The women giving their liberty and lives to the vote, only made the Powers That Be more stubborn about giving it?) The needs of a society to adapt to the decimation of the First World War, brought in one man, one vote, and a short decade later, one person, one vote (more or less, it's complicated!).
We have this myth that we are a stable people: we are not. We are in the very infancy of working out who we are, and what we want from the world. We once thought we knew what we wanted, and that the issue was how to achieve it... no more. We know what we do not want... but we are not sure of what we do want. Hence, the hung Parliament.
There are two things to say about this.
One.. that feeling of doom and gloom when we woke up this morning, or wiped the sleep from our tired eyes and stared at the flickering screen once more... and found nothing had changed.
There was a moment, a glorious moment, when the possibility that it could all change... was with us. Rather like the first week of the National Lottery and we clutched our dreams with our single ticket and thought "It can happen.." we were left with the bitter taste of despair. In some sense, we didn't care what replaced the stalemate, the deadlock... we just wanted to know it was possible.
Whilst not liking that it really wasn't possible... it was a dream... I'm quite relieved there wasn't an overnight miracle and we woke up to a LibDem victory - which would have been them in second place somehow. I'm relieved that the worry-mongering of "Vote for LibDem and you vote for a hung parliament...." didn't happen. No one can look at this hung parliament and 'blame' the LibDem swing.
It's hung, because we are. We have no idea how to proceed. We're not sure. We don't like stuff... but we have no idea of what we do like. We want freedoms, liberties... but not to pay for them.
This is hardly surprising. Like all humans, we are making it all up as we go along. And we're doing it at such speed, we forget we are blood and bone and mammal, and pretend we are somehow more than we are: the need to survive. What does that mean in a world with enough food, but not enough housing? In a world with enough money, but little wealth? In a world where our children are targeted as the future, via growth charts and SATS? Where a packet of crisps is presented as much more of a threat to their well-being, as them being forced into formal schooling at 3 years old?
What does it mean for us to survive? A middle class agenda of "economic well being"?
Apparently, not.
We've also been refusing to look. As all home educators became aware, the present Government has been eroding civil liberties at a frightening speed. Nothing illustrates this as much as the debacle of those who could not vote last night. Arrogance, and incompetence, disenfranchised parts of the electorate last night. That's the core element of this saga. Not a deliberate, concious and planned out conspiracy. A simple, arrogant, inability to prepare properly, to understand the issues.
And total chaos on how to deal with it. No strong direction and understanding of purpose.
How, and why, last night happened, is patently clear. The thinking that allowed the lack of resources, of understanding, that is a motif of the current Government. The complete consternation at being caught out...
Why would lots of people vote? Why would cutting resources, to save money, affect services? Who will notice?
Who will care?
Labour's absolute arrogance, at not listening, not paying attention, pushing their own fiscal agenda at the costs of basic tenets of not just what our society believes in, and were elected to uphold.... illuminated perfectly by there not being enough ballots, and not enough staff. And how they felt they could allow it to happen... well, who cares? No one has noticed before...
Our absolute arrogance in letting them do it, again and again and again...
How dare lots of people turn up to vote! And not bring their polling cards and make us do some work! Preposterous!
We have the Parliament we deserve. We voted for confusion. We have to see it through.
Let it be.... and see. We have chosen this path, freely. We deserve to walk it to the end, and see where we end up.
In the midst of a world wide recession, with terror and fear threatening to blow up half the world... we are paying for our arrogance, and our complacency.
The cavalry did not arrive last night.
There is no lottery ticket to get us out of this.
We have to work to find a collective, common vision, of what we want to achieve, and not just concentrate on what we don't want.
And that means we have to put the work in, and talk, and agree, and move forward... together.
Consensus.
Without it, we're hung out to dry.
Let's see what happens, and accept we did this, and only we, can get out of it.
We are the barbarians at our own gates. We are also the cavalry.
Let's make sure enough ballot papers are printed, next time.
And there is room for everyone: not just us.
Enlightened self interest starts with enlightened, not self.
Hecate
